Book Excerpt: At War With A Broken Heart

Excerpt

Would you stop ignoring me?”

“No.”

“Morrie.”

“How about you quit butchering my name? If you insist on using my first one that no one else uses, stop making me sound like a five-year-old schoolboy. It’s Morogh, though you know I prefer Fie.” Morogh Fie Russell scowled at the former love of his life over the top of his reading glasses. He hadn’t seen Edmund in close to eight years, not since Fie’s return from Afghanistan. War hadn’t been kind to him, leaving him a changed man in many ways. “I’ll ignore you if I want, as I didn’t invite you inside.”

“I refuse to call you by a name that sounds like it belongs in Jack and the Beanstalk. What were your parents thinking?” Edmund took a few steps towards Fie, grimacing when he stepped into a stray bit of wet clay. “I wanted to talk. How do you stand it out here in Bideford? I’m surprised you didn’t move back to your family’s farm in Scotland. Devon doesn’t seem your sort of place.”

“You refused to call me anything at all for years. And how is where I live any of your business?” Fie honestly didn’t want to revisit their failed relationship. “What’s changed? Did your latest fling kick you out?”

“I missed you. Us, even.” Edmund gestured towards Haggard, Fie’s blue merle border collie service dog, stretched out across a blanket in his corner of the pottery shed. “I can help. What can your old mutt do that I can’t?”

“Help? You broke me. You lost the right to put me back together.” Fie wiped absently at the sheen of sweat on his brow; he hadn’t even gotten close to his kiln yet. Why am I suddenly overheating? “Sod off with you back to your posh London penthouse.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Hell.” Fie dragged a hand roughly through his greying hair. His dark brown eyes examined Edmund and found him relatively unchanged. Still as selfish as ever. He’d missed seeing the fault in his ex-lover’s personality until far too late. “Well, I hope the apology made it all better for you. I still feel like shite.”